Overview

Electorates by alphabetical list

Labor's election win in 2022 marked only the second out of ten elections going back to 1996 at which the party won a parliamentary majority, and the result carried with it indications of the long-term weakening of the party's support. Its 32.6% national primary vote was the lowest in the party's modern history, down from 33.4% and 33.3% at its seemingly disastrous 2013 and 2019 elections, to say nothing of the 40.0%, 42.8% and 38.8% it recorded at past historic low points in 1966, 1975 and 1996.

The saving grace for Labor was that the Coalition's 35.7% was likewise an historic low, reflecting an ongoing evaporation of the party loyalties that shaped voting behaviour for most of the twentieth century. The blow fell entirely upon the Liberal Party – which, as well as losing ten conventionally marginal seats to Labor, lost as many again to the “teal independents” and Greens, as the party was gutted in the wealthy metropolitan suburbs that had historically been its bedrock. Labor also benefited from a record high 85.7% flow of Greens preferences, contributing to a 52.1% to 47.9% win on the national two-party preferred vote.

There was substantial variation in the swing between states, the most striking case being Western Australia with its Labor swing of 10.6%. This carried an echo of the unprecedented Labor landslide at the state election the previous year, both results attributable in large part to the politics of the state's border closure during the pandemic. Labor's 55.0% share of the federal two-party vote was easily its best since the Hawke era, yielding it three Perth marginals plus the normally safe Liberal seat of Tangney. The Liberals also lost Curtin to teal independent Kate Chaney, leaving the party barely hanging on to one seat in Perth.

The Liberals were also savaged in seats with large Chinese populations, losing four out of the five seats they held that ranked among the top ten in the country for Chinese language speakers, including the teal independent win in the Melbourne seat of Kooyong. These seats accounted for two of the three lost in each of New South Wales and Victoria, the others being the historic blue-ribbon Melbourne seat of Higgins, which Labor won for the first time, and the conventionally marginal seat of Robertson in the Central Coast region of New South Wales.

At the other end of the scale was Queensland, where the Greens rather than Labor emerged the beneficiary of a 4.4% swing against the Coalition. The Greens gained the seats of Brisbane and Ryan from the Liberals along with Griffith from Labor, reducing Labor to four seats from the five they held after their already disastrous 2019 result. Labor also suffered a 1.6% swing in Tasmania, and held one of its two seats there by less than 1%.

Redistributions, by-elections and seat arithmetic

The electoral picture since the 2022 election has been disturbed by four by-elections, one of which produced an historically unusual gain for the governing party, and substantial redistributions in three states, together with the Northern Territory. Labor gained the seat of Aston in Melbourne on April 1, 2023, securing a 3.6% margin in a seat where it had fallen 2.8% short at the election. Labor was at the peak of its fortunes in the polls at this time, with later by-election results proving less encouraging. The Gold Coast seat of Fadden swung 2.7% against Labor the following July, and there was a 3.6% swing in the Melbourne fringe seat of Dunkley the following March, despite swings typically being milder at by-elections caused by sitting members' deaths.

The state redistributions have arisen from changes in the states' House of Representatives seat entitlements, with Western Australia recovering the sixteenth seat it lost in 2019, while New South Wales and Victoria were each down one to 46 and 38 respectively (the vagaries of rounding causing a one-seat reduction in overall seat numbers to 150). The axe in both the larger states fell in inner metropolitan areas, disrupting the teal independents by abolishing the seat of North Sydney following Kylea Tink's win there in 2022. Other teal independent seats have been substantially redrawn, with the Melbourne seat of Kooyong absorbing part of its abolished neighbour Higgins. The new seat in Western Australia mixes outer suburbs and rural areas and has a modest notional Labor margin, though it would likely go conservative in the context of a more typical election result for the state.

Based on post-redistribution estimates of the seats' margins, Menzies in eastern Melbourne goes from highly marginal Liberal to highly marginal Labor, and the two parties become impossible to separate in the already finely balanced seats of Bennelong and Deakin. Most determinations fractionally favour the Liberals in both, resulting in notional party representation post-redistribution of Labor 77, Coalition 58 and other 15. This does not account for two seats the Liberals lost to resignation following preselection defeats: Moore MP Ian Goodenough, who will contest the last Perth seat remaining to the Liberals in 2022 as an independent, and Russell Broadbent in the regional Victorian seat of Monash, who will retire.

The post-redistribution margins and party vote shares used on this site are based on determinations that are fully accounted for through the following links, for New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Northern Territory.

Polling and the electoral terrain

The prestige of Australian opinion polling suffered a major blow at the 2019 election, the result of which reversed a consensus among pollsters that Labor would win around 51.5% of the two-party preferred vote. While not a major error by global standards, it marked a jarring departure from a long record of strong performance by election eve polls in Australia, and the unnatural uniformity of the results suggested pollsters “herding” towards a consensus view for fear of standing exposed. Changes in methods appear to have been broadly successful, although the Labor primary vote was again overestimated at the 2022 federal election, the actual result of 32.6% comparing with an polling industry consensus of 35% to 36%.

As illustrated on the BludgerTrack aggregate, polling suggests Labor enjoyed a conventional honeymoon in its first year, followed by a progressive decline that never relaxed. Labor's lead had disappeared entirely by the end of 2024, with Victoria a particular problem area, the swing there around 2% more than for the country at large. The failure of the Indigenous Voice referendum in October 2023 appeared particularly damaging, polling at the time recording Anthony Albanese's net approval in the negative for the first time since the election. The corresponding ratings for Peter Dutton have fairly consistently been mildly negative, but had become less so than for Albanese by late 2024.

State by state

Two of Labor's seats in New South Wales, Bennelong in Sydney's inner north and Gilmore on the South Coast, are held on negligible margins, with Bennelong becoming notionally Liberal after gaining the western end of abolished North Sydney. Other seats in the state that would fall on swings of up to 4% are Robertson on the Central Coast, Paterson in the Hunter region, and Parramatta in Sydney's middle west. Seats further down the pendulum could go if Labor does badly on the urban fringes (Werriwa on 5.2% and Macquarie on 6.3%) or in the Hunter region (Hunter on 4.9% and Shortland on 6.0%). One of Sydney's four teal seats, North Sydney, has been abolished – of the other three, Zali Steggall's convincing re-election in 2022 suggests she starts favourite in Warringah, but Allegra Spender and Sophie Scamps remain untested as incumbents in Wentworth and Mackellar. Teal-voting territory from North Sydney has been absorbed by Bradfield, where the Liberal member is retiring and teal candidate Nicolette Boele is running again after a strong performance in 2022.

Victoria has developed into a Labor stronghold over the past decade, but polling there suggests the party is set to come off historic heights that had won it historically conservative seats such as Higgins (now abolished) and Corangamite (now seemingly secure for Labor on a post-redistribution margin of 7.9%). Labor has an uphill task in defending its by-election gain of Aston, and the redistribution has slashed the 6.8% margin by which it gained the Chinese community stronghold of Chisholm in 2022 to 2.8%. The redistribution also leaves Labor more vulnerable to the rising challenge of the Greens in the inner northern Melbourne seat of Wills. With a Labor margin of 3.7%, McEwen on Melbourne's northern fringe is susceptible to a backlash among mortgage payers. Two teal independents are defending seats won in 2022, with Monique Ryan's job in Kooyong complicated by redistribution, whereas Zoe Daniel's seat of Goldstein has undergone only modest change. In the country, teal candidate Alex Dyson is trying again in Wannon after coming within 3.9% in 2022.

Queensland was the crucible of Australian elections for the first two decades of the century, but Labor's success in 2022 despite winning no new seats there suggests its strategic importance has diminished. Given Labor's low base in the state, it might harbour hopes of gains to balance losses elsewhere: an interesting prospect given that Peter Dutton's 1.7% margin in Dickson is the narrowest in the state. However, Labor has higher hopes of overhauling the 3.4% margin in the Far North Queensland seat of Leichhardt, where Liberal veteran Warren Entsch is retiring. Labor's tightest margin in the state is a seemingly solid 5.2% in the Ipswich region of Blair, but the LNP appears at least hopeful of accounting for it. It also remains to be seen if the Greens can defend their three gains in inner Brisbane, and if they face a greater threat from Labor or the LNP. Labor won the two-party count over the LNP in all three seats, by margins of 2.4% in Ryan, 4.4% in Brisbane and 11.1% in Griffith.

Labor's two-party preferred vote of 55.0% in Western Australia in 2022 was around 10% better than the party's federal norm over the previous two decades, reflected in post-distribution Labor margins of 9.1% in Pearce, 9.6% in Swan and 10.7% in Hasluck: Perth seats that had largely or entirely eluded Labor over the previous two decades. While the Liberals are hoping for a recovery off their miserably low base, polling suggests it will not be on a scale to return them to competitiveness in these seats. It's a different story with Labor's biggest prize of 2022, the normally safe Liberal seat of Tangney, where the post-redistribution margin is 2.6%. The new seat of Bullwinkel on Perth's eastern fringe has a notional Labor margin of only 3.0%, and Labor lacks the advantage of a defending sitting member. The seat looms as a three-cornered contest, with former state party leader Mia Davies running for the Nationals.

There are few marginals among the ten seats in South Australia, but Labor was able to increase its tally to six in 2022 through its first win in the southern Adelaide seat of Boothby since 1949, aided by the retirement of Liberal incumbent Nicolle Flint and the turn away from the party in inner metropolitan areas. Flint is making a comeback bid at the coming election, at which she needs to overhaul a 3.3% Labor margin. Labor may yet harbour hopes of accounting for a 0.5% Liberal margin in Sturt in Adelaide's inner east, where a new teal independent could also be competitive. The once Liberal seat of Mayo appears secure now for Rebekha Sharkie, effectively an independent but formally a member of the Centre Alliance, which originated with former Senator Nick Xenophon.

The three seats of central and northern Tasmania all frequently changed hands over the decades, but the Liberals have lately been in the ascendant. The one seat remaining to Labor, Lyons, was retained against a 4.3% Liberal swing in 2022 by 0.9%. The party evidently fears for its hold on the seat, having encouraged sitting member Brian Mitchell to make way for former state party leader Rebecca White. The Northern Territory produced mixed signals in 2022: Labor consolidated its hold on the traditionally marginal Darwin-based seat of Solomon, while being brought to within 0.9% of defeat by a 4.5% swing in Lingiari, which covers the remainder (redistribution has increased the margin to 1.6%). Labor appears secure in the three seats of the Australian Capital Territory, despite rising Greens support and the emergence of a teal independent candidate in the seat of Bean.